As a tribute to the robust scholarship undertaken by its members and to recognize their publication achievements, the Society for Socialist Studies awards an annual book prize for a significant contribution to socialist research in Canada. The award is named after the founder of Fernwood Books, Errol Sharpe, a leader in left scholarship since 1991.
We solicit nominations of books that advance the general aims of the Society for Socialist Studies, which are “to facilitate and encourage research and analysis with an emphasis on socialist, feminist, anti-racist and ecological points of view”. For the Errol Sharpe book prize, we understand this to include, as well, scholarship committed to transformative social change involving such topics as Indigenous issues and queer and disability perspectives. Books should go beyond historical or biographical accounts and celebrations of achievements to include critical political, economic, and/or cultural analyses and indicate paths of activism relevant today to Canada and beyond.
The prize is for single or jointly authored original books, published in the previous two years and that have not been previously nominated for this award (i.e., any specific book can be nominated once only but can be nominated in one of two years). The award excludes edited collections, textbooks, and translations.
The prize includes an award of $500 and is presented at the annual meeting of the Society. The winner is invited to present a keynote address at the next Congress meeting.
Nominations (including self-nominations) are welcomed from any member of the Society including those on the Book Prize committee, and from book publishers.
Those nominating a book for the Errol Sharpe prize should describe, in two or three paragraphs, how it meets the criteria. If the committee agrees that the book does not meet stated criteria, it will not be eligible for consideration for the award.
Nominations must also include: the full publication information including copyright date; confirmation that the nominator has secured permission from the author(s) for the nomination; the E-mail addresses of the author (s) and publishers. Nominators and authors must ensure that the publishers send one copy of the book to each of the 5 members of the Book Prize committee by the deadline of January 10, 2023*. (If a publisher is not prepared to provide such books, these could come from its allotment of copies to an author and will be returned to the author by the jury). For the 2023 award, a book must have a copyright date of 2021 or 2022 and cannot have been previously nominated for this award.
Nominations should be sent to the chair of the Book Prize committee: Will Kujala (wkujala@ualberta.ca) who will provide publishers with the contact information for all five committee members.
* The deadline for submission of books is January 10, 2023. Books published between December 13 and December 31 are eligible, provided that members of the jury are informed of the date of mailing.
Previous winners include:
2022: Cynthia J. Cranford, Home Care Fault Lines: Understanding Tensions and Creating Alliances, ILR Press 2020.
2021: Julia Guard, Radical Housewives: Price Wars and Food Politics in Mid-Twentieth Century Canada, University of Toronto Press, 2019
2020: Ingrid R.G. Waldron, There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities, Fernwood Publishing, 2018
2019 No Prize Awarded
2018 co-winners: Harry Glasbeek Class Privilege, Between the Lines Press, 2017 AND Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives, Fernwood, 2017.
2017: Todd Gordon & Jeffery Webber, Blood of Extraction, Fernwood, 2016
2016: Gordon Laxer After the Sands: Energy and Ecological Security for Canadians, Douglas and McIntyre, 2015.